10
THE HONGKONG
A mother of four wrote this article. She
She called it-
Nothing ever happens to me
-but she has her family,
and her life is not really so uneventful.
both want some one to whom we our
CD11 tell everything. This girl's all favourite garment was a Harris
tweed coat: she liked Scotch people and ways: she yearned for an Island of her own, somewhere in the Outer this is part of me, Hebrides. All
100.
OR ten years there has always been a baby in house now there are just four little boys collecting and swopping cigarette cards. You know being a mother isn't just bearing and nursing
a day job, seven days a week babies: it's a twenty-four hours even at night mothers sleep with one car and one eye open.
Sometimes I think that nothing really interesting ever
There were many other points of happens to me, and yet I know that all the time I'm surrounded kinship between us. Finally, at the by miracles. And the children keep on growing and developing end of the book, when I was nearly bursting with excitement, the girl growing away from me and developing their own personalities. hud an accident which made
The other morning when I went into the night nursery 10 look different from other people. It get the boys up I was greeted with a shout of "Stick 'em up, may sound incredible, but 100, buddy," and each child, even the youngest, whipped out a toy pistol have had a similar accident, from under his pillow. They call their guns "gal. Of course, edhe minded the alteration in I don't approve of this, but one has to keep up with the times.
when
her
und
my bookself naked her be-
her, he answered in the very words
My eldest boy anounneed that eyes and rolls up his shirt-sleeves that my own love used. So some- he'd folied on Insurance soclety and is supremely happy.
does happen to me sometimes.
thh
run by another boy at school, They Our house is built on a slope, and A manicure
pay in a weekly premium of three
at the back, where the ground falls cigarette cards and receive a com- pensation of five cards for a deten- away, a cellar runs underneath. We flon; and ten for a double detention, call this place the storehouse: It's twenty for a wishing, fly for a real gloryhole. flogging. and a hundred for (x- pulsion.
They're all different
and
haired
I
TRY to keep calm and unemotional with the children, but there is so much to do I get red. Last night I cut It shelters toy cars, an enormous eighty nails on eighty' little Angers marble-topped washsland (which and Locs! has had to be lugged upstairs to my
bedroom every time I've had a baby; When I was feeling low one day ALL my boys are different the nurses loved it becouse it didn't Alan threw his arms round me and maller what they spilled on it), four sakl: "You're the bestest woman in The eldest both fal- Prams in various stages of dflapida- the whole world-and the fattest!"
and some stray field mice. I am neither, I can assure you. tlon, second
A in character.
the youngest are
and blue-eyed; the
boy takes after me and the third, Morning scuffle
Max, is like nobody except himself. He is a merrylle soul with twinkling eyes and dimples and un Independent spirit.
There is not much time or money for outside pleasures. Arriving
You can always tell the home, on the rare occasions when I time by the sounds in our leave the children for a few hours, hurry upstairs to count the glasses house. At ten to eight the nursey door la flung open, and the boys of orange juice which overnight are Between the second child und myself is an indefinable link, a feel- burst out, clattering along the land- put on the chest of drawers on the three, four. ing that does not exist between the ing to the bathroom. After break- landing, One, others and me, although I adore fast there is a terrific rush and scufflé Thank God, they are all still alive to end at least well enough to be having get the two elder boys off to is all. This boy-his name
their early morning cocktail. Alan-is no beauty; he has a podgy school.
them
two,
nosc and a large mouth, always "Where's my apple?" Alan shouts Good-night ̈
ready for a friendly smile. But
straight to my heart.
laolder..brother...comes
every morning. It's always on the
look from his big brown eyes goes hall table wrapped in a paper bag
CREEP into the night nue-
with his name on it. Lealle, the
sery. They are sleeping home elder boy, wants 31ed. for tuck, peacefully, all in a row-two single from
Ture beds, a large-cot,-und-a-smaller-one. school with his friends: I eleven o'clock milk and his I seldom have the
odd At the end of the baby's cot (I still have to fetch Alan-he is only seven horne.
and we come home on a bus. All ha'penny, so he often gets 4d. He call him the baby, although he gets 1 completely the conductors like Alan; he always must make a good bit on that extra indignant about it) raises his cop to them.
Elevenses
ALAN loves gardening and
ha'penny.
be-
TELEGRAPH. THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1937.
Songs Of Canton
SIR CECIL CLEMENTI'S
TRANSLATION
Of the literary works of Sir Cecil Clementi, late Governor of Hongkong and later of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States, none is less known than his translation of the "Cantonese Love Songs," published in 1904 by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. Readers may therefore wel- come this extract from Sir Cecil's scholarly introduction, together with one" of the poems.
Again, we see the girl, in the brief, of her happiness, weaving hour words with her lover as they stand
they
beside the ring-fence, while he writes on the whitewashed wall the lotus- flower song which they have sung together: or reclining by her lover's side beneath the flowers no watch the moon grow round.
But suddenly she overhears the chill words of men saying that the peacock and his mate will soon be torn apart. Then the spring is shattered: yet she bravely takes up the burden of her predestined sor- row. Her lover is young and brilliant scholar, whose debt to his books summons him to pass examina- tions at Peking: for, although bright as a long sword, yet his brilliance has never left the sheath. The girl who loves him so tenderly cannot MARRIAGE in China, as in other let her love stand in the way of his 1 countries where the patriarchal advancement: she hopes to see him system is strong, and where ancestor one day arrayed in academic robes worship is the chief cult of the and returning home In honour: but people, has become little else than the hour of parting, the very word
institution for the birth of "parting" haunts her. legitimate children. The principle of sexual selection does not decide
An
and
*
marriages in China: and, since bride Therefore, two days and more be- bridegroom frequently have tore his departure, she whispers in never met before the wedding day; his car by the pillow-side ber mes- where the bargain made by their parents is ralined love before mar sage of good-bye Love; fair though ringe is almost impossible, and love Peking may be, yet forget not your
sweetheart!" Swiftly the
hours is rare enough,
pass, long as she may that the forest in view of the fact branches would arrest the setting
-after
A love is hardly ever Branc
that
a theme of Chinese poetry, it is sun, a moment his charlot and will be at the door. She possible to regard much of the ima- forces herself to mirth and laughter, gery which abounds in the Cantonese so that her lover, may go with a light love songa, merely as euphemisms, forced on the pact by the nature of heart. Then he is gone northwards: with yearning eyes she follows the his subject.
carriage on its way, yet she is loath to stand at the door, lest her sorrow should be a mock to prying eyes. Many melaphors are indeed
When he is out of sight, the girl trite that in Chinese they scarcely bear the poetic value which results retires to her chamber and there from their translation into
nt last the pent-up heart finds "Arbours of flowers and
relief in long and heavy weeping.
50
and Nature tries to comfort her, but the i
haunts of vapour, the "world of song of the oriole, the fragrance of
Jose
und powder," #rouge flowers." and other such expressions, the flowers, and the vernal season In a lonely have only one possible meaning to u only and to her woe. Chinese and thereby some bedroom she faces the red lamp set
of the delicacy which they re
table, and in futile effort thing
her on tain for English cars.
raises in her hand a cup so that its But, if this is true on the one hand, shadow on the wall may delude her it must be remembered none the less into seeming less forlorn. Then she that in China the position of a cour- seeks rest in sleep, and in sleep she teson is far less degraded than dreams of reunion with her lover.
The Wounded Spring
The bird cries; the flower falls; the spring has a hidden wound. The man in old age, as he muses over the bruised flower, feels broken in spirit. Green spring itself believes that there are those who pity its sadness: Yet I fear that we, playthings of rouge and powder, must drift desolate all our life long. I cannot tell whose love is strong or whose is fickle. Commonly a. perverse fate betrays the rosy girl to heartless
men.
To-day the butterfly is gone, deserting an open flower: on whom,
then, can. Lrely 7. Ah! My throat is stifled with sobbing. When I think how the jade jewel is shattered and fragrance' buried, I cannot check the tears which fall from my two eyes.
bald, exhausted Teddy Bear stares ap at the ceiling; a chocolate box I meet myself
filled with miscellaneous treasures is firmly wedged in the next cot.
Western nations. Sold Hark! the sudden scream of the had day I
Over the rail at the head of each among a THE other
EL by her parents at an early age. goose has divorced the wedlock of also the gardener, whe
thrilling experience: I cat hangs a tiny knitted cont comes and leans on a spade for n met myself in a book. The author is longing to the golliwogs clasped in sacrifice to the poverty of her family, her dreams: It is the currler-goose, but come without letter from her arms of the two little boys. or mortgaged by her husband for u half-day once a school holidays they have their have never met, who cannot possibly
On the very frst page
of book
under his elderdown: Alan's hold debts, the little girl or the wife Or was # mere indolence in writing? "clovenses" together in the store- know me. house: a glass of beer and enormous the book I had a strange feeling of bed is bumpy with woolly animals Is
trade is, elther to resell their bar in his mind, let him send the empty portions of bread and butter and intimacy and understanding towards being kept warm: he wy, animals is bought by women, whose infamous If, then, he has unsent letters written cheese
for
gardener, and the heroine, who wasn't a heroine hearted. I bend down to kiss each gain at a profit or to train their cover: so that, spreading out the lemonade and biscuits and cheese at all, Just an ordinary person like child
silky acquisitions for the life to which an pink paper, the fond girl may ima- and gently stroke his
Pecuniary gine it holds ten thousand words. for the gardener's boy,
myself, full of negative for a friend: hair: I will try to be a better mother evil fate doomed them.
necessity, not vice of character, has Ite promised to write: but, as she Alan pulls his cap down over his like me, she was motherless, and we to-morrow.
been in China the chief cause of counts up the days upon her finger- tips, she reckons that a full half- meretricious sin.
week. During a well-known modern poet whom he eldest child has an airplane term of years in puyment of house- lover. Is he, then, grown careless?
the
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OF HONGKONG, LIMITED.
[
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It is as the solution of a problém year has gone by without news. In She In domestic economy that the father lapse of time comes despair,
of suleide: but fears to die sells his unknowing child, or the thinks husband pawns his wife, though in amiss, lest dying she should say the latter case the victim must be "Would I might die once more!" a consenting party to the bargain. make a Debt has been known to woman mortgage her person: while
*
Then comes the reproaches. of het
on occasion the Chinese Government "pocket mother," who sees oid ac- has sold, as a source of revenue, girls quaintances, draw back and no new arrive. The ledgers show who for their own fault have been guests
The 130 payments. discarded by their family. But It is debts only, always economic necessity, and Marine Magistrate and his Police scarcely ever free choice, that sets storm and threaten as they levy the women to walk in "Willow Lane and "Rouge-tax," to supply pin-money for ladies of the Imperial Palace; and Flower Street."
even excess of sorrow is better than the judge's gate.
It is a sad picture, with the pathos For this cause an intense Bodness broods over the lives of these young of an intense realism. The life here thousands is lived by of, described Is the sen girls. "Wide, wide bitterness:
l-fated be more than throughout the length and breadth Half therein.
Escope is wellnigh of the Chinese Empire, and withal Impossible. It can be attained only lived in so humble a resignation to
one of two means. Elther the that which these girls girl must by her sin save money suf- their predestined fate, as may
to the bystander felent to ransom herself from the
or,
to be
well
deep ad-
ufe to which she has been from the miration of the extraordinary Bolace life to which she has been destined; which the Buddhist faith, imported
a foreign country, mistrans If more fortunate, she may, be from fore her maidenhood is lust, meet a lated, misunderstood, altered beyond truc-hearted guest-gallant," whose the recognition of its worship is the love will "bring her safe to shore, chief cult of the people, of either as his wife or concubine. This Eighteen Provinces,
Is the one way of hope which lights up the gloom.
the
Kill Kidney
Trouble Quick
Thousands-'ot· aufforora from Elaney
In a series of varied pictures the Cantonese Songs describe for us the life of such a girl. We see her at the follet-table uralding her hair, with the significance of a love-spell in action: for, as she parts. her every hair so will her lover part all trouble and come to her; the centre of her headdress symbolizes the concentra trouble and Riadder weaknces have of her heart: the roots of the stopped Getting Up Nights Log Point. hair and the ends of the tresses Circles Under yon, wolton Ankler. follow Nervousness, Stiffness Raumalim, Diz- are signs that she
siness, Lumbago, Burning, Itching; Smart- her love to
the end; the flowers In, Acidity, and Loss of Virgur by Doo- she wears are emblematic of her to new discovery called Crater
jex), denly soutin, tones, cleans, and flower-debts and will win her the heats, wore idneys. in 10. pilauter favour of the Flower King: iets starte purifying your blood,
now health, youth and tailorin "moon roses" will gain her the pro-Guaranteed to and your troubles in a daya tection of the Old Man in the Moon. or money back. Get Cyster at nil chemists.
will.
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OUR BRITISH CROSSWORDS
ACROSS
1 Encountered a doctor, a student
of theoretical philosophy,
10 In the open you might find it
tedious.
crack angler,
11 Sounds like certainly,
Q
12 Though belonging to us, turned
Bour, I'm afraid.
13 Sallers in distress-and others --will find a welcome here. 14 Trade name for linoleum,
17 You should have no difficulty in
getting it unfastened.
18 Sounds made by malcontents
and houyhnhnms.
10 Tailors?
21 The nearer you get to this the
better.
25 Ingredient of all pills,
20 You'll have to bend down for.
this,
27 Has lots of teeth, but can't bile.. 30 The Royal Navy, for example." 31 Berkshire town,
32 Here you must put trust in the
unworthy.
2 Came in.
DOWN
3 Eager for a sixpence?...
4. Say hen (anag.).
5 Riddled. This is
a treatment
which sugar sometimes under- goes.
The price one has to pay.
7. This is entertaining, and seis
one a-thinking.
A They are fair game for the (hy- light-hearted, certainly phen, 7,5),
This is bullt of marbled stone.
15 Audible evidence of a relaxation
of the senses.
as
on R
10.Writer greatly appreciated by
woll Arabs-s nomadic countless other readers, comment 20 Enthusiastle
batsman, or, maybe, a club (two words, 4,
03)
22 May be upset in the English Channel without much danger.. 23 Not these."
24 Dog of no particular breed.
28 Sallors say the Marines believe
him
20 Rang up, but left no message.
Yesterday's Bolution.
SIXTY THOU BANDĮ
B ESE A
TIBISH
TENSE
REFRESH
I MADAM E CATE FORBEAR HALTERA
F
REVIVAL HOMERTO
E
N SECTIO VINT
RAVENE L LEAD'S
TENE SECRETARYSHIP